Diary of a Madman - Pein Edition
by Gal Can't Help It
Summary: It may not have been exactly what Kafka had in mind, but even a god could use a little help when it came to the hell of paperwork.


_Naruto characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto, Jon Cooley and Franz Kafka both acknowledge their own genius, and no grapefruit were harmed in the making of this document._

* * *

The grey-coloured gloomy atmosphere of outside managed to permeate the interior of the room. Even the golden aura from the few lamps that hung from the ceiling seemed reluctant to let their warm glow extend any further than necessary. The long shadows they created plunged most of the room into an unnatural level of darkness that hid a sense of foreboding.

A solitary man in a dark cloak stood in front of the floor length window, his forehead pressed against the coolness of the glass as he watched the sheets of rain fall onto the city below. He caught the reflection of his own ringed eyes for a moment, before breaking the stare to again focus on the low clouds hanging over the city. Usually this view of the city's skyline, as mist covered and rain slicked as it was, soothed him. But not today.

As leader of both a powerful criminal organization and an adoring public in Amegakure, there were definite perks that came with the job. But despite the lofty ideals that came with being a leader, there were also the mundane activities and responsibilities that made the position more tedious than he would ever admit.

And of all of these responsibilities, it was the decrees he grew to hate the most. Not so much their function. Oh no, he had a smug satisfaction that his words carried the inarguable power of god, justice, and peace. But why, _why _did he need to make rules that dictated how many fruit vendors could sell their wares in the main market on a Thursday morning? He frowned slightly as he looked out the window to the market in question, located only a few hundred metres from the front of the building he currently occupied.

He had other priorities. Finding jinchuriki, harnessing unbridled power, submitting the world to his complete will. He pulled his gaze from the cityscape to the desk waiting behind him, and reluctantly made his way to the pile of scrolls sitting on the edge. He couldn't help himself from letting a sigh escape his lips. It was already evening, and the self-imposed deadline for the latest set of decrees was two days ago. Pein shuddered at his own inability to focus on the task at hand. It wasn't like him to procrastinate. He still did not have anything written. He stared at the empty scroll in front of him, a sense of deep-seated loathing directed toward it. For its part, the scroll continued to sit there with complete indifference.

He noticed the lamplight in the room reflected off of his piercings in a myriad of sparkling ways, distracting him easily from the task at hand. Shiny objects often did this to him. He lightly shook his head - must FOCUS!

Taking a seat behind the desk, he wracked his brain trying to think of how to make "vendor selling space shall not exceed 3m x 3m in size" sound awe-inspiring, with a hint of "fear-of-god"ness tossed in for good measure.

Understandably, it was not going well. Soon he was looking for something, ANYTHING, to write, but nothing happened. He took a deep breath, and waited. Inspiration was still not forthcoming.

He waited some more. Nothing.

He was suddenly reminded of a quote by some literary mind whose name escaped him at the moment: "You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will role in ecstasy at your feet."

"Right," he reassured himself. If there is any merit to this line of thinking, then all he had to do was simply sit and wait and all manner of inspiration will come to him, and the inane phrasing for the latest set of decrees will be complete, practically writing themselves.

He was quite pleased with this line of thinking. Interested in documenting this thought process to determine if it was a worthwhile endeavour, he readied his fully inked brush and poised it over the scroll in front of him. He jotted down "10:00pm" along the edge...and waited.

* * *

10:30pm. Nothing to report. Though completely unrelated to the task at hand, I am grateful to have such a comfortable chair to sit on, as it makes the waiting quite enjoyable. The levers on the side make it go up and down. Up, down. Up, down. Chakra Cannon be damned, it doesn't get much better than this.

10:32pm. Will need to get chair repaired after overuse of the up/down lever. Cheap thing. Kakuzu must have bought it on sale. Upon turning the chair over to examine the lever mechanism, I noticed the "Made in Iwagakure" sticker on the bottom of the seat. Tch, figures. The only thing to last long out of that region is the Third Tsuchikage. At least the seat of the chair is still comfortable.

10:34pm. Nothing visual or auditory to report. My stomach has decided that maybe the extra helping of grilled fish for dinner tonight wasn't such a good idea. A series of groans and rumbles from my stomach break the silence, punctuating my second thoughts about the fish. I'm wondering if perhaps I shouldn't be sitting in the ensuite, on the porcelain chair.

10:36pm. My stomach has granted me a reprieve. It has come to my attention that there is a lot of dust in this room. Do we not have a cleaning lady to take care of this? Where is she? I don't remember cutting back on maintenance staff around here. I swear, if Hidan made a sacrifice out of her to Jashin, I'll show him what a god's wrath really feels like...

As a god, it really is beneath me to wonder these things, but how is it that one day there is no dust, then suddenly it just appears in every corner? Does it migrate all at once? If there is dust everywhere, why does it only collect in certain places in the room? I figure that the distribution of dust per particle in the air is roughly uniform, so it seems to make sense that the distribution of dust on the floor would also be uniform. Although it's not a sentient being, does dust have a preference for where it chooses to locate?

10:54pm. The bulb in one of the ceiling lamps has burned out. At this time of night, the hired help will have already headed home. I venture downstairs to find a 60 Watt replacement.

I stroll by the area Konan refers to as the "Common Room". Naturally being anything but "common", I only glance in the room before walking by. Deidara and Tobi have returned from a mission and are filling out their report, their arguing echoes off the walls of the large room. I walk into the bathroom and close the door before I start talking to myself in the mirror using a mocking and highly inappropriate voice for a leader. "Is Tobi a good boy? Is Tobi a good boy who likes dango and puppies and rainbows? Is Tobi secretly Madara using a puppet government to achieve his end goal of world domination to the detriment of mankind?" I feel slightly unclean having lowered myself to rudely impersonate our real leader, but sometimes I just need to get the frustration out. And I can't Shinra Tensei a village every time I need a release. But I definitely need to work on my Madara impression.

10:56pm. I forgot the light bulb downstairs. Stupid Tobi, he is a distraction of the worst kind. I return downstairs to retrieve the bulb.

10:57pm. I put the light bulb in, but with preoccupied thoughts I forgot to turn the lamp off before I did it. I was inadvertently staring right at the bulb when it came on, so now I am temporarily blinded. However being a god and possessing the Rinnegan, this does not phase me as I dOnt need to see asmu landriting isst ill perfecf.

10:59pm. My vision has returned. Something smells like gas, but I am sure it is nothing.

11:01pm. I am beginning to feel a little light-headed. What is that smell?

11:11pm. Make a wish.

11:46pm. Wow, you won't believe it. I'm just sitting here, writing stuff, and this guy rides in on a yak. But it's not just any guy, it's freakin' Jiraiya. So I says to Jiraiya, "Jiraiya, what are you doing in my office? I thought I killed you?" He only smiles and says "Like my yak?" Being partial to oversized beasts with piercings, I tell him that I think he could be doing better, and while we're on the subject (though we aren't), I mention that I don't think his novel "A Gutsy Ninja" was all that visionary or special, that his methods of research for his other novels was kind of creepy, and his hair was unkempt. He looks hurt, but I think he knows I'm right.

12:?pm. You know how the tailed beasts are all part of the 10-tailed beast? Do you ever wonder why each of the beasts didn't get just one tail each if there were only 10 tails to be divided up in the first place? Maybe that extra tail could have been tacked onto a tenth beast, or double up tails on one of the original nine beasts. But then the other bijuu probably would have been real jerks about it, just rolling their eyes, saying "Oh, here comes the beast with two-tails instead of just one, thinking he's better than the rest of us". They probably wouldn't let him sit at their lunch table either. I bet they're all a bunch of bullies anyway. I sure don't feel bad about sucking them up into the Demonic Statue - they totally have it coming. My bookcase just got up and walked out of the room. I'm sure this should concern me on some level, but all I can think about is pomegranates, and how I could get my hands on a couple.

45:83zm. I'm on the floor, and let me tell you, it's mighty hard. However, it's given me a chance to discuss living conditions with the dust and it's as you'd expect. Three words: location, location, location. Personally, I wouldn't want to live under a bed, but that's only because I have monsters living under mine. As long as I don't put my feet on the floor, they won't grab me and eat me. They think that inevitably I'll have to go to the bathroom, and then they'll have me, but I've finally outsmarted them. I used some of my extra piercings and rods to nail my bed to the ceiling, so of course when I get out of bed I'll go crashing down to the floor, but at least they can't get me. If I walked along the ceiling, well, then I'd be screwed.

24738.1 I think I'm drowning. Don't tell Hoshigaki, but I'm well on my way to perfecting his water vomit technique if I can produce just a bit more drool.

* * *

Several hours later, Konan found Pein's semi-unconscious body on the floor of his office, murmuring about bijuu on the ceiling and fruit vendors.

* * *

The following morning, all was back to some semblance of normal.

A gas leak had since been repaired, a chair had been replaced, and Pein was once again seated at his desk. Having a clear head, and only the slight remainder of a headache from his experience the previous night, he set to work on the scrolls in front of him.

It was not long before his work was interrupted by a loud explosion coming from outside the building. He turned his head to the window in time to see the debris from the concussive flying in all directions. His eyes widened when he saw the disturbing sight of a decapitated head of an Ame resident flying toward the window, a red trail of liquid following after it, before it came to an unceremonious splat against the glass. Swiftly stepping from behind his desk to examine the trouble outside, he realized the "head" was in fact a ripe pomelo. This disturbed him even more.

He took in the sight below him. A few hundred metres away, smoke continued to pour out between the shards of wood and twisted pieces of metal that once made up the stalls of the formerly busy market.

He glanced over at the calendar near his desk. "Ah, Thursday. Right."

Disgruntled vendors and customers began to emerge from the wreckage, shell-shocked, but still angry enough to raise their shaking fists and yell what sounded like obscenities skyward. His view was briefly interrupted by Deidara and Tobi soaring past his window on a clay bird, overhearing Tobi's comment to his sempai that people would probably appreciate his art better if they weren't being blown up or running for their lives. A withering glare from the blond had Tobi quickly add before they flew out of earshot, "Though they were out of dango, so they probably did have it coming to them."

Pein knew he would have to punish those two when they returned, but in a way they just took care of his problem. After all, one doesn't need to make a decree for a market that no longer exists, correct? A smile graced his lips.

He returned to his desk and leaned back in his chair and began to wonder if any of the surviving vendors carried pomegranates...for some reason, he was just in the mood for one.


End file.
